The gisant monuments, like many other tomb-devices and innumerable sepulchral inscriptions, were intended to have an admonitory effect on the living, similar to that exerted at an earlier period by Le Dit des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs, &c. In Part III. I shall describe certain analogous admonitory medals, such as those having the portrait of a beautiful woman on the obverse and a skeleton on the reverse; and in Part IV. I shall refer to various carved ivory beads, wooden or wax statuettes, &c., intended in the same way and with the same object to contrast life, vigour, and beauty with death, powerlessness, and putrefaction. Of sepulchral monuments of the gisant type-designed to serve as a memento mori to the living as well as a memorial of the dead-we may instance, as a good and early example in England, the fine one in Canterbury Cathedral of Henry Chichele (died 1443), Archbishop of Canterbury, and founder of All Souls' College, Oxford. On a table, under an elaborate canopy, is a recumbent figure, representing the Archbishop during life in full canonicals. On a slab below the table an emaciated dead body (wrongly described as a skeleton) 79 is represented (see Fig. 19). Round the verge at the bottom of the monument is the jingling memento mori inscription "Quisquis eris qui transieris rogo memoreris, Tu quod eris mihi consimilis qui post morieris, The gisant tomb of Cardinal Lagrange (who died in 1402), in the museum at Avignon, is probably one of the earliest sepulchre-monuments on which the deceased is represented as an emaciated corpse.80 Of the fifteenth See R. Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, vol. ii. (1796), p. 129. 80 See Emile Mâle's well-known work, L'Art Religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France, Paris, 1908, p. 377, Fig. 181. century is also the design (mentioned elsewhere) for a tomb by Jacopo Bellini in the Louvre Museum at Paris, representing a sarcophagus on which is stretched a decaying corpse. Above the corpse are the following Latin lines, with the date 1557: "Olim formoso fueram qui corpore putri Nunc sum. Tu simili corpore lector eris." FIG. 19.-The Tomb of Archbishop Chichele (died 1443) in Canterbury Cathedral. A good and early example of the so-called gisant type of sepulchral monument in England. merly legible on the cadaver monument (possibly only a memento mori imitation of a tomb) near the tombs of Bishop Stapeldon and his brother in Exeter Cathedral Ista figura docet nos omnes meditari Qualiter ipsa nocet mors quando venit dominari"; also the traditional "Leonine" and grimly punning epitaph on "Fair Rosamund," the mistress of King Henry II of England (said to have originally referred to another Rosamunda, a beautiful but wicked Lombard queen of the sixth century, who is supposed to have assisted in the murder of her husband, Alboin, A.D. 573): "Hic jacet in tumbâ Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda; These lines have a Mediaeval jingle, like the "Leonine" hexameter on the tomb of Bede (died 735 A.D.) in Durham Cathedral "Hâc sunt in fossâ Baedae venerabilis ossa"; that on the tombstone of Bishop Peter de Quivil (died 1291) in Exeter Cathedral "Petra tegit Petrum, nihil officiat sibi tetrum "; that on the beautiful Chapter-house of York Minster "Ut rosa flos florum, sic est domus ista domorum and the proverb ("Leonine" with "false quantities")— "Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere pace." On a sepulchral monument in the Church of the Celestines at Herverlé, near Louvain, is the inscription, "Nunc putredo terrae et cibus verminorum." One of the woodcuts in an early French Calendrier des Bergers ("Shepherds' Calendar ") represents a skeleton, with some flesh and hair still attached to the bones, standing upright on a tomb, holding a huge dart in the right hand, and in the left a mirror, on which a death's-head is reflected. At the sides are Latin "Leonine" verses : "Qui speculum cernis, cur non mortalia spernis? Unde superbimus? Ad terram terra redimus." Below are French verses of the ordinary sepulchral admonitory kind: "Regarde moy, souspire et pleure: Qui mort attens, et ne sçais l'heure : On the sepulchral monument of the gisant type, in Rouen Cathedral, of Louis Brézé (died 1530), Grand Seneschal of Normandy, the husband of Diane de Poitiers, above is a statue of De Brézé on horseback and in full armour; below is a sarcophagus of black marble, on which lies a representation of his shrivelled corpse. The same idea is evidenced in Germain Pilon's gisant monument of Valentina Balbiani, wife of the Chancellor De Birague in the Louvre Museum at Paris. In the old church of St. James at Clerkenwell (London) there was an elaborate monument, with a "skin-and-bones" recumbent figure, of Sir William Weston, who died in 1540, the last prior but one of the Knights of St. John in England (cf. J. Weever's Ancient Funeral Monuments, 1631, p. 430). In old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, there was a sepulchral monument of John Colet (1467-1519), Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and founder of St. Paul's School (London), representing a skeleton reclining on a mat under a canopy; in a niche at the top was a bust of the Dean. Many sepulchral monuments of the kind 81 are referred to in Richard Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, London, 1786-1796, vol. i. pp. cx.-cxii., and vol. ii. pp. cxviii.-cxx. For illustrations of French sepulchral monuments by French and Italian sculptors, more or less bearing on this subject, see Paul Richer's L'Art et la Médecine, Paris, * With sepulchral monuments of this kind, those of Greek times, with their simple (and in the best examples, very beautiful) so-called "parting scenes" may be contrasted. But on the mural paintings of Etruscan tombs, the representation of the brutal-looking Etruscan "Charun" (as the messenger of death), and sometimes other horrible Gorgon-like "demons," holding snakes, &c., invest death and the parting scenes depicted with horrors equal to those suggested by Mediaeval art and legends. 1902, pp. 511-519; and Jules Guiart's series of articles on "Le Macabre, dans l'Art," in Aesculape, Paris, 1912– 1913. Compare also T. J. Pettigrew's Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, pp. 40-43, for French "admonitory " epitaphs on Edward, the "Black Prince," who died in 1376, and John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who died in 1304. That on Edward, the Black Prince, is obviously on the model of what the dead kings say in the various versions of the Dit des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs; it commences as follows: "Tu qi passez oue bouche close: Par la ou ce corps repose: Sicome le dire le say: Tiel come tu es je au tiel fu: Tu serras tiel come je su: De la mort ne pensai je mye: Tant come jauoi la vie." That on John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, is somewhat similar "Vous que passez ou bouche close Pries pur cely ke cy repose: En vie come vous estis jadis fu, Et vous tiel serietz come je su: Ky pur sa alme priera Troiz mill jours de pardon avera. 27 82 The English admonitory epitaph of William Chichele (brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, above mentioned), and Beatrice his wife, on a brass dated 1425 (Higham Ferrers Church, Northamptonshire), commences"Such as ye be, such wer we; Such as we be, such shal ye be." 2 Cf. also Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 45 and pp. 62-68. |